Making Changes to Meet Your Budget
By Matt - Thursday, June 19th, 2008
Realistically making a budget is easy, all you do is put a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper or a spreadsheet. Even making an accurate and well thought out budget isn’t all that difficult. The problems arise when you need to make that budget work. Sticking to a budget can be really hard especially if you’re just starting to budget.
To make a budget work you need to stay within the allotted amounts and sometimes to achieve this you need to make some changes in how you spend your money. Each week will be different with different pressures and needs to spend money. Last week was a perfect example for me (and I apologize if the choice of expense isn’t ideal its to prove a point).
Each week I allocate $25 for spending on smokes (they’re expensive in Canada) and this amounts to three small packs for me which is more than sufficient. Unfortunately not everyone sells them at the low rate I’m used to. Buying them by the office means I’m paying a premium. I ended up buying them twice by the office and I was about to run out again. The crux of the matter came that if I bought my usual pack at the lower rate I’d go over budget for the week.
Rather than spending the extra money (and going $0.61 over budget for that category) I made a change to make sure I met my budget, I bought a discount brand to keep the numbers in line. I changed how I spend my money to make sure that I didn’t go over budget.You need to do this all the time in order to make our finances work, especially if there’s little flexibility in our budgets.
I’m looking forward to the day when I can take that line out of my budget (Smokes) but for the time being trying to reduce the monetary impact is a starting point. I’m trying to do this with each category in my weekly budgets and so far I’m starting to see the impact of planning ahead and adjusting my spending to meet my budget.
This entry is filed under Budgeting and Planning, Financial Situation.
2 Responses to “Making Changes to Meet Your Budget”
1 Blake says:
June 20th, 2008
at 3:18 pm
This gets really tough sometimes. If I budget $20 or so for weekend spending money, but then a good friend calls and wants me to do something that will easily cost more, I have a hard decision. Sure I could take some money out of my main checking account, but then again what is the point behind my budget? Budgeting is easy in theory, but the real world doesn’t often align itself perfectly with our numbers!
This is my first time here. Really like what you’ve got going on, I’ll definitely be back.
Good luck on eventually eliminating the smokes from your budget!
2 Michele says:
June 22nd, 2008
at 7:30 am
Another good point here today.
As for the smoking, I can sympathize with how hard it is to quit. I only smoked for five years, but when I quit I was smoking a pack a day. I think I craved the HABIT or smoking more than the actual nicotine. I remember that the second I got into my car I wouldn’t start the engine until AFTER I’d pushed in the lighter. Driving was one of my hardest times to not light up. There were quite a few stops and starts, but I eventually made it. You will, too!!
Have you tried that medication called Wellbutrin? It worked pretty well for my sister who is trying to quit. She actually much better success with the newer one called Chantrix (I probably spelled that completely wrong, but I’m too tired to go look it up….sorry.). It might be worth a shot. She was doing really, really well, and then she had an extremely stressful week, and she started again. BUT, she had been off the medication for two weeks before that happened. When she’s on the Chantrix, she said she has NO desire to smoke at all……that the thought of it actually makes her sick. Might be worth a shot.
Anyway, good luck with the quiting. Just think of how much more money you’ll have to save or spend on fun things once you do quit.
Have a nice Sunday!
Hugs,
Michele
luvkittysmeowmail@gmail.com
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